Readers of our report last year may remember that we shared a graph, produced with Google’s nGram Viewer, reflecting trends in use of the phrases ‘freedom from’ and ‘freedom to.’ The chart is reproduced here, reproduced here, over-leaf. It reflects a shift in priorities, beginning in about 1961 and accelerating thereafter, that emphasized the perhaps more individualistic interest in ‘freedom to’ (do, be, believe, have) over a more communalistic interests in ‘freedom from’ (fear, oppression, injustice, want).
Google’s nGram charts the frequency of word usage among millions of books printed since 1800. By dividing the number of appearances a word or phrase makes in a given year, by the total number of words in the entire corpus of work produced that year, Google calculates the frequency of single word ‘grams’ two-word bi-grams, and so on. Thus, the nGram tool serves as a rough guide to social trends.
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